Saturday, November 08, 2014

My alter-ego, the Grouse, had gone off into the woods after a brief return in May 2012, and seemed to have expired amidst the busy-ness of dissertation-making (of which more below). Also, it had suffered a seemingly-fatally whiff of grapeshot from the dominance of post-bloggian and more contemporary forms of online socializing and opinion-spouting. After all, when one can annoy hundreds of friends on Facebook with one's palaeolithic sentiments and tweet to many more, why spend the much greater time needed to compose and post a blog which, even at its peak, was never deluged with visitors. Fewer yet were substantive comments despite the intentionally offensive postings -- for every one of the few who took the time to tell me what an a**hole I was in a nice personal manner, there were countless more offers for organ-enlargening supplements or ostensibly buxom Belorussian pen pals.

So to repeat, like an old soldier, the Grouse did not so much die as fade, fade away. And as I sat at my predominantly dissertational desk, I ignored the plaintive death rattles of an ever-expiring gallianceous provocateur. I was sure, at last, he had gone never to return.

But then one fine day in late July of this year, I waddled to the microphone in Dayton, Ohio and was passed a scroll and duly convocated by Antioch University, a doctorate in Leadership and Change, based largely on my dissertation which, in typical grousian fashion, was narcissistically about myself, as a prototypical would-be friend to the First Nations an "empathic settler" as the title put it. For the light and disturbed sleepers among you, head on over to Antioch's e-library where you can watch a video intro to this and if really insomniacal, download and peruse the tome itself!

But, as always, I digress. Fact is that the Grouse is needed more than ever as the mass idiocy of the US mid-term elections and Canada's irreparable elevation of a mid-levl oil advocate to the Prime Minister's office -- with the consequent rubber-stamping of hideous mega-projects, well reveals. Free of the aforementioned scholarly endeavour, I have the time now to take on issues tiny and huge, spanning (as they will), matters as local as the current utter non-choice my domicile city of Prince George has between mayoralty candidates to the much-travelled but essential topic of climate change denial, in which, in a forthcoming column. I will try get my mind around why every mid-sized city like here, seems to have been allocated its own bevy of unpaid bloviating denialists.

I mean, I really get why the petroleum giants spend lavishly on creating the false sense that there is still scientific controversy about global warming. But why do retired independent duffusses sit at home with barely contained excitement and anticipation for the latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change so that they can grab their proverbial dull pencils and write angry, deconstructions of what people who know what they are really talking about say on greenhouse gloom?

Ah, but there I go giving too much away ahead of the upcoming full article on local denialists. Do stay tuned. I mean, really, friends, get ready. The ground above where we thought the Grouse was permanently interred, shudders; a familiar if partially decomposed avian visage bursts forth; it's back! It's back!

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About Me

Oddly, I am a trained mediator (as well as marine biologist and community planner) who discovered in mid-career a great preference for causing rather than resolving conflict.
For several years, the Grouse's Perch graced the pages of the Coast Mountain News in Bella Coola, British Columbia.